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On The Government’s Epic Fails In Jobs And Housing
Wednesday, 5 February 2025, 12:55 pm | Gordon Campbell
Through its austerity measures, the coalition government has engineered a rise in unemployment in order to reduce inflation while – simultaneously – cracking down harder and harder on the people thrown out of work by its own policies. More >>
Israel, Hostages, Thailand & Jobs
Tuesday, 4 February 2025, 8:42 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
Thailand was involved in delicate diplomatic efforts to gain their freedom, "so it does not want to create any problems that will cause any misunderstanding among parties involved in the conflict," then-Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara said. More >>
Trump, Tariffs And Russia: A Very Muddled Policy
Tuesday, 4 February 2025, 10:08 am | Binoy Kampmark
When it comes to dealing with Russia, though, the matter of tariffs sits oddly. In 2024, US imports of Russian goods came in at US$2.8 billion. What is imported from Russia is certainly of value: radioactive materials indispensable for US power stations, ... More >>
Gordon Campbell On Trump’s Tariff Wars
Monday, 3 February 2025, 1:51 pm | Gordon Campbell
Trump being Trump, it won’t come as a shock to find that he regards a strong USD (bolstered by high tariffs on everything made by foreigners) as a sign of America’s virility, and its ability to kick sand in the face of the world. Reality is a tad ... More >>
Reti’s Velvet Glove Wore Too Thin For PM’s Iron Fist
Friday, 31 January 2025, 2:11 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the sacking of Shane Reti as health minister and the appointment of Simeon Brown as his replacement. More >>
Dear World: This Is What Palestinian Unity Looks Like
Friday, 31 January 2025, 1:58 pm | Ramzy Baroud
By cultural revolution, I mean the defiant and rebellious narrative evolving in Gaza, where people see themselves as active participants in the popular resistance, not just mere victims of the Israeli war machine. More >>
Funeral Atmospherics At The British Library
Friday, 31 January 2025, 1:51 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The exfiltration of data was also accompanied by an encryption of data and important operating systems, a devilish effort effectively shutting out staff and users from any engagement. Certain services were also destroyed to frustrate recovery efforts ... More >>
Dunne's Weekly: ACT Looks Backwards
Friday, 31 January 2025, 10:34 am | Peter Dunne
The focus on this new entity would be on the buildings and would exclude the delivery of health and education services and staffing so as not to compromise the continued public ownership of those services. It would be solely about managing public assets ... More >>
History Is Not A Game
Friday, 31 January 2025, 9:13 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
That conclusion manages to be both redundant and wrongheaded at the same time. A game indicates an eventual outcome, and there is no final outcome to human history, unless we drive our species into extinction, as Homo sapiens is driving half the ... More >>
Reckless Disregard Or Cruelty (Or Even Trumpian!)
Thursday, 30 January 2025, 6:26 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the sudden decision to remove the evidence based equitable age for Maori and Pacific eligibility for the national bowel screening programme. More >>
DeepSeek, And China’s Inexorable Rise
Wednesday, 29 January 2025, 1:32 pm | Gordon Campbell
The week’s big story has been about China’s DeepSeek low-cost AI model. Because DeepSeek requires fewer advanced chips, its advent has had a huge impact on the fortunes of US chip-making giant, Nvidia – which immediately lost $600 billion of its value. More >>
The Transcendent Brain
Tuesday, 28 January 2025, 12:43 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
After having been immersed in the childish rituals of the Catholic Church growing up, I became averse to rituals & belief systems by my middle teens. Therefore I had no interest in methods, systems & traditions of meditation, which are fabrications ... More >>
Frankfurt Airport: A Special Kind Of Loathing
Tuesday, 28 January 2025, 8:41 am | Binoy Kampmark
The errors begin with a rather jaunty announcement by a cabin crew member that the flight from London is ahead of schedule. “You will have plenty of time to make your connecting flight. Take your boarding pass and head to the gate. That is all ... More >>
Gaza's Unbreakable Resistance: A Historical Perspective On The War And Its Aftermath
Tuesday, 28 January 2025, 8:29 am | Ramzy Baroud
Gaza's history is one of both pain and pride. It stretches back to ancient civilizations and includes great resistance against invasion, such as the three-month siege by Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army in 332 BCE. More >>
On The Government’s Gaslighting About Growth
Monday, 27 January 2025, 10:46 am | Gordon Campbell
Trump and Luxon have in common a lack of any experience in how to kick-start economic growth, especially in the wake of a recession. Their real expertise lies in deal-making i.e. in the re-packaging of wealth that’s been created by others, and on selling ... More >>
Localism Is A Dead End; It’s All Glocal Now
Friday, 24 January 2025, 3:29 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The cliché “local solutions for local problems” becomes nonsensical without awareness of the planetary crises facing all of human beings. By refusing to see and deal with things as a whole, localism exacerbates of the very problems it purports ... More >>
Gaza Ceasefire At Last: How Israel's 'First Defeat' Will Shape The Country's Future
Thursday, 23 January 2025, 4:14 pm | Ramzy Baroud
Unlike previous military campaigns in Gaza—on a much smaller scale compared to the current genocidal war—there is no significant strand of Israeli society claiming victory. The familiar rhetoric of “mowing the lawn”, which Israel often uses ... More >>
Pity The Poesy: Mark Rutte, NATO And Spending For War
Thursday, 23 January 2025, 9:49 am | Binoy Kampmark
A chief function of NATO’s public relations efforts lies in justifying its own existence. Instead of dismantling or finding more peaceful pursuits at the end of the Cold War, it became the groomed emissary of US power in Europe, while never being ... More >>
Parliament's Annual Rituals Are Underway Again
Thursday, 23 January 2025, 8:39 am | Peter Dunne
When Parliament resumes next week, the first item of business will be the presentation of the Prime Minister’s Statement, which is supposed to set out the broad thrust of the government’s legislative plans for the year ahead. More >>
Gutting Specialised Health Teams Follows ‘slash And Burn’ Strategy
Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 3:23 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses Health New Zealand’s plan to disestablish expert national health teams as part of its Commissioner’s ‘slash and burn’ strategy. More >>
On The Looming Conflicts Within The Trump Presidency
Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 10:46 am | Gordon Campbell
How long is it going to take for the MAGA faithful to realise that those titans of Big Tech and venture capital sitting up close to Donald Trump this week are not their allies, but The Enemy? After all, the MAGA crowd are the angry victims left behind ... More >>
The Wasted Interregnums Of Obama And Biden
Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 10:26 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Since neither Obama nor Biden was capable of speaking from the clarity, insight and passion required for meeting the psycho-spiritual crisis in the USA, both interregnums were wasted. More >>
Justifying The Egregious: John Howard And Spying On East Timor
Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 8:53 am | Binoy Kampmark
The best assessment offered of this episode in Australian history comes from Galbraith: both Howard and his foreign minister, had shown themselves to be mere “shills for the corporations”. This amoral approach towards a country in dire need undercut ... More >>
Friend Or Foe? How Trump’s Threats Against ‘Free-Riding’ Allies Could Backfire
Tuesday, 21 January 2025, 7:14 pm | The Conversation
Donald Trump wants US allies to spend more on defence and has threatened NATO members with coercion. But allies have agency too, and are already planning their responses. More >>
The Fight For Dignity: Reshaping Gaza’s Post-War Narrative
Tuesday, 21 January 2025, 10:52 am | Ramzy Baroud
The latest Israeli war on Gaza was not ordinary, but then, no previous wars have been anything but destructive and lethal. For Israel, it was a genocide—a war aimed at exterminating Gaza's population through mass killings and driving the survivors ... More >>
On The Rise Of Simeon Brown
Monday, 20 January 2025, 11:33 am | Gordon Campbell
Replacing Shane Reti with Simeon Brown as the new Minister of Health is a signal that the gloves are coming off in this crucial portfolio. Alarmingly, PM Christopher Luxon even used the term “ruthless execution” to describe how Brown will be carrying ... More >>
Good Does Not Fight Evil, But Stands Firm And Dispels It
Monday, 20 January 2025, 10:26 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
The die is cast where Trump, the United States and the post-World War II order are concerned. The failure of insight and imagination by academic, media and political elites, exemplified in the moronic “good Trump, bad Trump” fantasy, feeds the ... More >>
Bitter Harvests: The Gaza Ceasefire
Sunday, 19 January 2025, 6:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Whoever claims credit for these latest developments hardly lessens the bitterness of the harvest. The prevarications, delays and obstructions have permitted massive destruction and loss of life to take place. Cowardice and bad faith have been the ... More >>
Situation Critical: UNRWA And Its Continued Operations
Saturday, 18 January 2025, 6:10 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Any ceasefire, already soured by the killing of over 100 Palestinians since its announcement, does little to address the institutional chasm that will be left were UNRWA to cease operating in any meaningful way. More >>
Waiting For Trump: How Bad Will It Be?
Friday, 17 January 2025, 10:37 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
There aren’t two America’s anymore than there are two political parties. There’s just one, and it’s Trump’s America. He will do his worst. More >>
The Gaza Genocide: The Fall Of Israel’s Immunity
Thursday, 16 January 2025, 3:46 pm | Ramzy Baroud
Numbers, though helpful, are rarely enough to convey collective pain. Using a new data-collecting method called ‘capture–recapture analysis’, the report indicates that by the first nine months of the war, between October 2023 and June 2024, 64,260 ... More >>
On More Threats To Democracy From David Seymour
Thursday, 16 January 2025, 11:55 am | Gordon Campbell
Early reports indicate that a temporary Israel/Hamas ceasefire deal is due to take effect on Sunday. And the Regulatory Standards Bill is another vehicle for constitutional change that’s being launched under the guise of sensible, garden-variety law-making. More >>
When Politics Gets In The Pocket Of The Gun Lobby
Wednesday, 15 January 2025, 4:19 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses when a government gets in the pocket of the gun lobby. More >>
The Darkest Hour Before Dawn Or The Sum Of All Dark Ages?
Tuesday, 14 January 2025, 10:27 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Given the global ecological, psycho-spiritual, economic and political crisis of humankind, is there a latent exaptation that can be released which will enable us to meet the present climacteric? Yes, the universal capacity for flashes and states of insight. More >>
AUKUS: Flawed And Sinking
Monday, 13 January 2025, 1:24 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Announced in September 2021 as “an enhanced trilateral security partnership”, AUKUS has hobbled and stuttered its way into 2025. Commentary from the pompom holders for war at such outlets as The Economist continue with such mild remarks as “ambitious ... More >>
On The History Of Doo Wop Music
Monday, 13 January 2025, 11:01 am | Gordon Campbell
The decade between 1952 and the early 1960s was the peak period for the style of music we now call doo wop, after which it got dissolved into soul music, girl groups, and within pop music in general. More >>
Israel Destroyed Gaza ‘For Generations To Come’ And The World Stayed Silent
Monday, 13 January 2025, 8:58 am | Ramzy Baroud
The worst-case scenario has actualized in a way that even the most pessimistic estimates by Palestinian, Arab, or international groups could not have foreseen. Not only is Gaza now beyond "uninhabitable", but, according to Greenpeace, it will be "uninhabitable ... More >>
Detained Without Charge: Eleven Yemenis Leave Guantánamo
Friday, 10 January 2025, 3:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
They are reminders about what the German jurist and Nazi enthusiast Carl Schmitt called a state of exception, a rather sinister way of saying that states, and leaders, can behave abominably if their position enables them to do so. More >>
The War Criminal 'Victim': Netanyahu’s Inevitable Fate
Friday, 10 January 2025, 9:43 am | Ramzy Baroud
Netanyahu understands this well and seems to have concluded that his only path to political survival is the continuation of the Gaza war and the expansion of the conflict to engage multiple parties. More >>
From Symbolic Consciousness To Insight Consciousness
Thursday, 9 January 2025, 2:37 pm | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
No computer, however complex it may become in a simulacrum of sentience, will ever be able to approach the state of silence and insight, and communion with death and love that is the birthright of the human being. More >>
Arresting And Killing Greenies: Targeting Climate Change Protests
Wednesday, 8 January 2025, 3:52 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In wealthier states, the climate change protester may be safer, but hardly immune from state violence. Arrests of protestors in both Australia and the UK are above the international average: 20% and 17% respectively. More >>
Welcome Puberty Blockers Report But Beware Derailing Transphobia
Tuesday, 7 January 2025, 5:16 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the Health Ministry’s position statement on puberty blocker prescribing in the context of an NZ Medical Journal article, guidelines based on the Hippocratic Oath and the risk of transphobic derailment. More >>
Take Your Money And Shove It: The Second Long Telegram, US Aid, And Russia’s Economic Trauma
Tuesday, 7 January 2025, 3:36 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While historical forces, local conditions and cultural idiosyncrasies will always guide the development of any state and community, there is something to be said that post-Cold War Russia might have taken something of a different path had Merry’s ... More >>
On Justin Trudeau’s Demise, In A Global Context
Tuesday, 7 January 2025, 11:48 am | Gordon Campbell
Canadians can take a while to get angry – but when they finally do, watch out. Canada has been falling out of love with Justin Trudeau for years, and his exit has to be the least surprising news event of the New Year. On recent polling, Trudeau’s ... More >>
Join The Army; Travel To Exotic, Distant Lands; And Radicalise
Monday, 6 January 2025, 3:47 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Those with such records were also abundantly linked to far-right domestic extremist groups and movements (73.5%), while 15%, or 24 offenders, “were inspired by or connected to foreign Islamist extremist groups” such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic ... More >>
Letters from Gaza – ‘Alhamdulillah. We Are Not Okay’
Monday, 6 January 2025, 10:16 am | Ramzy Baroud
It may seem strange that none of those who communicated with me throughout the war have ever questioned their faith, and have often, if not always, begun their messages by checking on me, and my children. More >>
Imperialism, Chagos Islanders And The Fight To Return
Sunday, 5 January 2025, 1:58 pm | Ian Powell
Ian Powell discusses the long determined fight of evicted Chagos Islanders to return home in the context of imperialism. More >>
Frail Egos And Sandpit Colonialism: Australia, The United States And Invading Iraq
Saturday, 4 January 2025, 2:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
What makes Australia’s own involvement even worse, was that the reason to go to war lay less in an international security threat than a weak ego and reputational yearning: to be cringingly worthy to Washington. More >>
Ignoring A Leopard’s Spots: The UK, Syria And Courting Dictators
Friday, 3 January 2025, 1:38 pm | Binoy Kampmark
In an echo of history, the current UK government has found a new man of transactional worth in Damascus. The great usurper, Jolani, has taken Bashar’s place. His Al Qaeda and Islamic State past is being strategically sanitised, the revolutionary ... More >>
Neuroscience’s Misleading Half-Truths
Friday, 3 January 2025, 10:37 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Diversity arises from wholeness, not from particularity. The notion that life can be reduced to its “basic building blocks” is a fundamental philosophical mistake of many scientists, who project the basic premise of thought—separation—onto ... More >>
Fighting Israel’s War In Jenin: Can The Palestinian Authority Be Saved?
Thursday, 2 January 2025, 6:20 pm | Ramzy Baroud
In the face of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and unprecedentedly violent crackdowns on Palestinians in the West Bank, the betrayal of the PA has been laid bare for all to see. The latest operation in Jenin is a clear manifestation of how Israel uses ... More >>
Far From Ignorant: The European Union, Arms Exports And Israel
Thursday, 2 January 2025, 1:14 pm | Binoy Kampmark
While the European Union dithers and stalls on responding to this subject, despite the ICJ’s interim rulings that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide, bureaucrats have been busy. More >>
Jimmy Carter, Israel And The Apartheid Question
Tuesday, 31 December 2024, 1:40 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Beyond his stint in office, the tongue worked more easily, and opinions expressed with greater ease. Over time, for instance, he frowned with matronly disapproval at Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. More >>
Pulverized By Asia's Tsunami
Monday, 30 December 2024, 2:58 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
Tourists were thronging Thailand's gorgeous southwest coast where Phuket island and the granite-studded, sandy beaches of Khao Lak became the hardest hit zones amid estuaries, mangroves, and sea cliffs. More >>
Greenland Redux: Trump And America’s Continuing Obsession
Monday, 30 December 2024, 12:45 pm | Binoy Kampmark
History shows that empires acquire territories in various ways. Dynasties link arms through marriage, as the Habsburgs were famous for doing. Territories are pinched by means of arms or stolen through sham contracts and undertakings. They might also ... More >>
A Palestinian Year In Review: Genocide, Resistance And Unanswered Questions
Sunday, 29 December 2024, 1:07 pm | Ramzy Baroud
2025 could, indeed, represent that watershed moment. This remains to be seen. However, as far as Palestinians are concerned, even with the failure of the international community to stop the genocide & reign in Israel, their steadfastness, sumoud, will ... More >>
Sinking Mike Pompeo: Tucker Carlson, Assange And Trump
Saturday, 28 December 2024, 2:25 pm | Binoy Kampmark
With the return of Trump to the White House, whose campaign was aided by various figures sympathetic to Assange’s publishing efforts, the eyes shifted, once again, to Pompeo. Would the now leaner figure make a return, probably as Defense Secretary? ... More >>
Suing Antony Blinken: The US State Department, Israel And The Leahy Law
Friday, 27 December 2024, 2:56 pm | Binoy Kampmark
Blinken’s record when applying the Leahy Law to Israeli units is disturbingly scrappy. In May, for instance, he explained to Congress that the punishments meted out to soldiers and officers in four cases prior to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, More >>
Jesting On The Environment: Australian Mining Gets A Present
Thursday, 26 December 2024, 1:18 pm | Binoy Kampmark
The institute pointed out that the three mines, in the current state of operation, “were already so large that they could almost cover greater Sydney, or most Australian cities.” More >>
The Antithesis Of What Jesus Taught And Lived
Wednesday, 25 December 2024, 10:42 am | Martin LeFevre - Meditations
Rather than face their own failings, mourn their loss and question why things went wrong, they declared that he died for our sins and started a religion that has ended in hate, power and greed, the antithesis of what Jesus taught and lived. More >>
